“At first our students look at us like we have three heads. Parchment paper, we say to them, you can use 3-4 times. Also plastic wrap; you can use it 2-3 times before you throw it away.”

Pain perdu, fruit leather and grapefruit crisps are some of Chef Pfeiffer’s favorite  expendable edible creations. Along with Sébastien Canonne, Chef Pfeiffer co-founded The French Pastry School (1995), where he is presently the Academic Dean for Student Affairs. Pfeiffer’s distinguished career has included coaching the U.S. Pastry World Champion team (2002); being inducted into the “Académie Culinaire De France” (2003); being named the “Jean Banchet Celebrity Pastry Chef of Year” (2005); and having a starring role in the internationally acclaimed documentary Kings of Pastry (2009).

Jacquy Pfeiffer: “My partner Sébastien Canonne, and myself – we grew up in Europe, not throwing anything away.  I come from Alsace, an area that was taken over by the Germans in WWII. They took all the animals and the chickens from my family farm and that family of mine had to learn how to survive and work with nothing. It was bad but you really value the things that you have.

Parchment paper and plastic wrap have 9 lives

Today, we are living in such a spoiled world we can have whatever we want, Fed-Exed overnight! There is so much waste around us. So Chef Sébastien and I have this in our heads. Every year, we have about 1,000 students going through the French Pastry School, and to all of them we say: Do not throw anything out right away.

Parchment paper, we say to them, you can use 3-4 times. Also plastic wrap; you can use it 2-3 times before you throw it away. At first our students look at us like we have three heads. But this is something that is taught in bakeries throughout France. Eventually you will have to throw something away but you don’t throw it away after the first use. Someday, they will be business owners and they will be happy to have that mind set.”

Oranges, grapefruits, even limes into soups, tuile cookies and candied peels

“We make orange soup from orange and grapefruit segments. Also grapefruit crisps or lace-y tuile cookies with honey ice cream on top. Oranges, grapefruits, even limes can be made into candied peels by submerging them in water and sugar and bringing them to a boil.  Then you add a little bit more sugar to it every day for 5-6 days. Over time, the sugar replaces all the water in the citrus peel. Once the peels become saturated with sugar, you can store them in the refrigerator until the end of time.”

Recycling hard bread into pain perdu or as a thickener for tomato sauce

“I grew up in a bread bakery, and you could never predict demand on bread. My dad would make his own breadcrumbs, letting old bread air dry until it was hard as a rock. He’d then put the bread through a food processor or grate it by hand. (Today you can put hard bread in a towel and crush it with a rolling pin.)  He’d use bread as a thickener in a tomato sauce. My wife makes a great meatball, putting in moistened slices of old bread, typically a baguette. She was an Italian mama in her past life. She can‘t cook for 5; only for 20, and she cooks fresh every day.

Another French way to recycle hard bread is pain perdu – French toast that is served as a dessert:

1. A French baguette is sliced on the bias, dipped into a mixture of milk and eggs, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla and then pan-fried in butter.
2. Dust them with powdered sugar and serve them with jam on the side.

The French have another pastry they recycle like that: almond croissants.

1. At the end of the day, you take leftover croissants, cut them in half lengthwise, put almond crème in the middle, and dip the whole croissant in simple syrup (2/3 sugar, 1/3 water) – in and out – with more almond crème on top and sliced almonds.
2. Put the croissant in a 375 degree oven for approximately 10 -15 minutes, and it comes out crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside. (When the demand gets greater than the supply, French bakers use fresh croissants!)

If you have any brioche or challah left over at home, you can do the same thing: dip the bread in and out of the egg-milk mixture, cut it in half, brush on the almond crème, put it back in the oven … Ohh, I can’t resist! Now if you have too much bread left over – you can do what my Dad did. He would go see his mom who had rabbits. They love to eat old bread.”

Fruit chips and fruit leather from fruit going south

“True, if the skin of a fruit looks bad or has turned brown you can only compost it.  But when you see fruit just beginning to go bad – berries or bananas, for example – you can cook the fruit down with sugar at a simmer, making them into sauces and jams. You can also make fruit leather.

In a 150-degree oven: You can make fruit leather from pear slices, by completely drying them. Kids love it because the fruit is very chewy. Purée the fruit in a blender, spreading the mixture out on silicon mats on a cookie tray and dry the fruit out slowly in a 150 degree oven for a few days or just 8-10 hours.  We are talking about drying, not baking the fruit. If you go too hot, you lose the acidity of the fruit and it becomes a burnt, jammy fruit chip. To test if it’s ready, take one slice out, put it on your counter top, let it completely cool and then see if it snaps. If it snaps, you evaporated too much of the water. If it’s still pliable and chewy, then you’ve made fruit leather!

In a dehydrator: Slice the fruit very thinly with a mandolin and put them in a dehydrator overnight. The next day you will have fruit chips – the same you’d buy in Whole Foods (in mango or strawberry) and the same that show up in cereal! The dehydrator dries out the water in the fruit very slowly. Fruit skins contain a lot of pectin which is healthy for you, so when we make jam here we use the skin – especially for, say, quince.”

Rum balls and crumbles from pastry dough

“On the sweet side:

• If you ever have any leftover cake, make rum balls. We’re not talking about spoiled stuff but leftover cake nobody is going to eat. Put a paddle in your mixer, put in a little butter cream and ganache if you have it, and then blend the two. Whatever pastry you throw in your mixer will probably already have some crème in it so you really don’t have to add more. If this will be served to adults only, you can add rum to the mixture. Remove and roll the pastry into balls, dip them into chocolate or roll them in sprinkles – what we call jimmies. Your leftover cake becomes a new dessert and I guarantee the kids will go crazy over it!
• Whenever I have cookie dough left, I put it in a meat grinder so it comes out like vermicelli. I put it on a sheet tray and freeze it. Then I break it apart and bake it in the oven at 325 degrees for 30 minutes. When it is completely cold I put it in an airtight bag, and keep it in the freezer to sprinkle over ice cream. It’s great with a little berry sauce like what we made from those berry expendable edibles!”

Hummus chips or breading from pizza dough

On the savory side:

• I make my own pizza dough. Whenever I have leftover pieces of pizza dough that I am not going to use, I roll them out really thinly, brush them with olive oil and throw on some sesame seeds. I put it on a sheet pan and bake it slowly at 300–325 degrees for about 30-45 minutes to evaporate all the water. After baking, I break it into chips, and everybody likes these chips with hummus for a snack!
• Any unused (un-sweetened) pie crust you can bake in the oven you can turn into bread crumbs. If you want, you can season the dough with sesame seeds, cumin seeds, or poppy seeds and then bake it. Pound the baked crust to make breading for a veal cutlet or fish. Coat your fish with flour, then egg batter and finally dip it into your breadcrumbs before baking your fish.

Have a Post-Thanksgiving Contest with friends

“We have friends that have an After-Thanksgiving Contest where they invite 20-30 friends and everybody brings over a potluck dish made from their leftovers. Every year the contest gets more and more fierce. It’s amazing what you can do with Thanksgiving dishes. We calculated a couple years ago, that we made a total of 28 meals from our Thanksgiving Day turkey, including Turkey Tetrazzini.

Play Clean-the-Cooler in your refrigerator and freezer

“At home, we call it a clean-the-cooler dish. Whatever is in the refrigerator or freezer, in drawers or whatnot, I check to see how I can bring things together for a dish. Maybe it’s one pepper, scallions, garlic, tomatoes. I chop it all up, sauté it, and put eggs in there. Usually I throw this kind of Provencal medley – spiced up with herbs – over pasta and the best part is that it’s never the same!  Or I might throw everything in one big pot and make a vegetable soup.

Stews made in your crock pot are another way to clean-your-cooler. Mushrooms that are getting soft but that are not yet bruised- my wife cuts them up and sautés them with garlic and onions until they almost have the consistency of ground beef.  Beef Wellington has a layer of chopped mushrooms in it like that. She also enjoys it on bread.

We make a vegetarian cassoulet, pretty much throwing every vegetable into the crock pot, with raw beans.  I use the slowest setting.”

Put only what you will eat on your plate

“Yes, I was taught to finish my plate. Once the war was over, my Alsatian family used to put too much on my plate because food became available again. It was all about the celebration of food. They were afraid they wouldn’t have any food again. Now I say to my children, put just what you want on your plate. I like to reduce portions so there is no waste. “

About The French Pastry School

The French Pastry School is a premier international institution of pastry arts education. Superb instruction, superior equipment, and top quality ingredients enable the co-founders and Academic Deans, Chefs Jacquy Pfeiffer and Sébastien Canonne, M.O.F., to uphold an exceptional educational facility for pastry and baking. The French Pastry School’s team of award-winning instructors has grown to a faculty of many renowned chefs, including Jonathan Dendauw, World Pastry Champion Dimitri Fayard, Della Gossett, Scott Green, World Pastry Champion En-Ming Hsu, Joshua Johnson, Master Cake Artist Nicholas Lodge, Kristen Ryan, Master Cake Artist Mark Seaman, and World Baking Champion Pierre Zimmermann.

Students learn the art of pastry in an intimate setting, being personally mentored by masters in their field. Programs offered include: L’Art de la Pâtisserie, the 24-week Professional Pastry and Baking Program; L’Art du Gâteau, a 16-week Professional Cake Decorating and Baking Program; L’Art de la Boulangerie, and an 8-week Artisanal Bread Baking Course. For more information, visit: www.frenchpastryschool.com.

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